About meI graduated from the Birla Institute (Pilani, Rajasthan) in 2003 with a BSc/MSc in Biological Sciences. I studied fatty acid synthesis and acyl carrier recycling in E. coli under John Cronan during my PhD (2003-2009) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2009, I joined Alan Grossman's group at MIT as a postdoctoral fellow and worked on the replication of an integrative and conjugative element in B. subtilis. From 2012 to 2017, I worked as a research scientist in Brian Hammer's group at Georgia Tech studying natural transformation and killing by the type VI secretion system in V. cholerae. In my free time, I enjoy scowling at the outdoors and wishing we all lived under climate-controlled domes.

Current Research InterestsI am interested in microbial cooperation and conflict and how these processes shape communities in chronic infections.